The Choirboys Quotes

“You have to experience it, in order to speak about it with authority. Joseph Wambaugh says it with an air of that same authenticity, in his stories of contemporary Police activities, and, with a disarming tongue in cheek, frankness. ”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“I mean that a battered child has a marvelous capacity to adjust to his torture and will ceaselessly love his battering parents. I mean that the mother of a sexually molested child will not leave nor truly protect the child from the father as long as the man has a good job or otherwise preserves that mother from an economic life which is more horrifying to her than the molestation of her child. I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it’s not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me, Dean. Rather it’s the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There’s not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that’s the most terrifying thing a policeman learns.”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“And as Harold Bloomguard gulped nervously all three young men nodded at Scuz. “And another thing, I’m sorry I gotta give you some a the shitty jobs but we get a vice complaint we gotta investigate it. I wish I could just let you work fun things like gambling and call girls and bookmaking back offices and fancy bars with good drinks, but that usually ain’t what we gotta do. So try to have fun but don’t get hurt. That’s the only rule I got. You let yourself get hurt and I’ll break your arm!”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“Burglars and thieves sometimes complained that they only committed crimes against property, not like muggers and rapists. Muggers and rapists never faulted policemen at all, which caused the choirboys to comment that as a rule muggers and rapists were the most appreciative people they contacted.”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“But Team Policing and the Basic Car Plan had created lots and lots of new jobs for officers of staff rank. Therefore lieutenants made captain, captains made commander and commanders made deputy chief, and everyone had all the time they needed to think up new things for the working cops to do aside from catching crooks, which most of the new captains, commanders and deputy chiefs knew nothing about.”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“You listen to me, Treadwell. You’re an office pogue. You never been anything but an office pogue. You don’t have the slightest idea what goes on in a working police division. But you keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told and I’ll see to it that you’re a captain someday and you can have your own station to play with. You don’t and I’ll have you in uniform on the nightwatch in Watts. Understand me, Treadwell?”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“Listen, Baxter,” Sam said. “We have crime in direct proportion to freedom. Lots of freedom, lots of crime. All I know for sure is something I’ve believed all my life. And it was verified for me in Vietnam and certified in the four and a half years I’ve been a cop. It’s that people are never more pathetic than when they’re asking themselves that absurd, ridiculous, laughable question, ‘Who am I?’” And then it was Sam’s turn to spill several drops as he tipped his glass. He paused, wiped off his moustache, pressed the nosepiece of his glasses and said, “If most people ever let themselves find the answer to that question they’d go into the toilet and slash their wrists. Because they’re nothing! The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can do police work without torturing yourself.”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“The passage was underlined. It simply said: “What is it, Catullus? Why do you not make haste to die?” FOURTEEN”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“The three most overrated things in the world are: home cooking, home pussy and the FBI.”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

“The very best, most optimistic hope we can cling to is that we’re tic birds who ride the rhino’s back and eat the parasites out of the flesh and keep the beast from disease and hope we’re not parasites too. In the end we suspect it’s all vanity and delusion. Parasites, all of us.” “Yeah,”
― Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys